Despisers of Law by G.

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jul 17, 1901

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 27, No. 29.

Despisers of Law.

By G.

The Examiner, the leading Baptist journal of the country, asks, the question, “Are we Americans coming to be a nation of despisers of law?” The question is easily answered in the affirmative. The prevalent mania for lynching, the fast increasing criminal list in the courts, and the general evasion of law by the great corporations, where their financial interests are at stake, are conspicuous witnesses. But the question of our contemporary has special reference to civil law. That the people are coming to be more and more inclined to despise the law of God is equally evident. And the persistent manner in which religious societies and the religious press are urging the intolerant enforcement of Sunday laws is the infallible proof of this proposition. No law is more emphatically stated than that known as the Golden Rule: “All ‘things whatsoever ye would that men should do to ‘you, do ye even so to them; for this is the law and ‘the prophets.’” No Sunday law ever can be enforced on the basis of this law. Civil and religious liberty for all never can prevail where freedom of conscience is denied to a single individual. In the very article in which we found the foregoing question, there is complaint of a jury which failed to convict a defendant who admitted that he worked on Sunday. Where a religious journal insists on the violation of the law of God, in order that tyrannical human law shall predominate, it can not consistently complain of a growing disregard of law. Surely Christians ought to stand by the principle, “We ought to obey God rather than men.”—Acts 5: 29.